Canadian teacher Rhona Cunningham eagerly embraced Schools Chancellor Harold Levy’s recruitment pitch last year to relocate and teach in the Big Apple.

But the English teacher’s decision to give up a teaching job in her native Toronto to work for the Board of Education has turned into a horror story.

She was fired from her job at John Bowne HS in Queens on May 9.

In January, several students accused her of using foul and abusive language and making sexual gestures.

The chancellor’s office of special investigation “substantiated” the allegations.

Cunningham, 34, is appealing her firing.

She remains on the schools payroll while the case is pending. She has been reassigned to the Queens high schools superintendent’s office – where, she says, she spends her days reading.

“I came here with good intentions,” said Cunningham, who claims she’s a victim of a “witch hunt.”

“Now I can understand why there is a teacher shortage here. Who would want to teach in a system like this? It’s a wicked system, your Board of Education. Mayor Bloomberg, please get rid of it!

“I want to be vindicated,” she said. “New York won’t break me.”

Investigators from the chancellor’s office determined, based on student interviews, that Cunningham made a gesture with her mouth and fingers that was viewed as imitating oral sex, called a student a “bitch,” used foul language, and said she would make students “feel stupid.”

The findings were included in a April 30 letter that Queens High School Superintendent John Lee’s office sent to Cunningham.

Cunningham denied all of the charges, asserting they were instigated by two trouble-making students, a boyfriend-girlfriend duo who were lying or twisting her remarks. She said the girl was late to class, and making out with her boyfriend against the wall just outside the door.

Cunningham said she told the boyfriend to stop “vacuuming” the girl’s face and he “flipped out and went crazy.”

“He threatened me,” she said.

The chancellor’s office defended Cunningham’s dismissal.

“We don’t care if you are from Mars. If charges of this sort of behavior are substantiated, we have every right to terminate you,” said Levy spokeswoman Catie Marshall.

Cunningham’s appeal is slated for next month.

Gotham’s rough-and-tumble schools have been too much for other foreign teachers.

There were 846 teachers recruited from Canada, Europe, Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. Of those, 43 quit, some leaving after Sept. 11 attacks. Three, including Cunningham, face disciplinary charges or were fired.

Levy is scaling back the international recruitment this year to 500, after some countries, particularly Jamaica, complained that Gotham was poaching its teachers.